Datasets:
Shuaimyself
/
data

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
Community
1
text
stringlengths
0
3.13k
In 1819, Leprince created a series of at least three small paintings depicting travel by stagecoach (in French, diligence). A touch of ribaldry at once realistic and fanciful can be seen in Le depart de la Diligence; off to one side, a male passenger renders the artist's signature and the date by urinating against a wall. This link between stagecoach travel and a certain raucous sense of humor was given free rein in Leprince's Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence, an album of hand-colored satirical lithographs depicting the perils and humiliations of travel by stagecoach, published in 1826. The "suite of twelve highly amusing plates" are to be found today only as "an extremely rare color-plate book. Plate No. 5 presents an amusing, if cautionary, piece de l'emesis vue de la nausée as a coach speeds along, causing the damsel riding atop it to hurl her cookies, which carom off a passenger's head and into a roadside beggar's chapeau."
The series won high praise. Jacques Arago wrote, "Shall we not put, next to our most caustic creators, Henry Monnier and Xavier Leprince, to whom caricature owes its most biting productions?"
"Everyone knows the charming lithographs where Mr. Xavier Leprince captured…all the disagreeableness reserved for poor
travelers taking the stagecoach," begins a review of a play based on the lithographs. The comedy Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence premiered at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris on Saturday, 11 November 1826, six weeks before Leprince's death.
The Musée Carnavalet in Paris and the British Museum in London both hold incomplete sets of Inconvéniens, but between the two, all the images can be seen.
Since at least the 1920s, another album of hand-colored lithographs has been attributed to Leprince. Métamorphoses d'Arlequin, Parades: Jouées sur le Théâtre Français, a set of twelve images published in Brussels in 1826, is "a fascinating and intriguing album that appears to be a political allegory with the theater as backdrop and Harlequin as character in the political events in France 1791-1826. The fact that the album was published, without publisher or artist attribution, in Belgium rather than France strongly suggests fear of running afoul of French press censorship laws of the era." Authorship has also been attributed to Henri-Gérard Fontallard, "but that cannot be so," according to rare book dealer David Brass. "Close comparison with caricatures signed by Leprince and Fontallard conclusively demonstrate[s] that the style here is dramatically different than Fontallard's but extremely close to Leprince's, particularly in the faces of the figures depicted." The Metropolitan Museum, which acquired a copy in 1966, lists attribution to J.J. Grandville. Métamorphoses d'Arlequin awaits the attention of scholars who may determine its authorship and elucidate its satirical nuances.
Portraits and self-portraits
A portrait of Leprince by Victor-René Garson was shown in the Paris Salon of 1822. A miniature portrait of Leprince by Frédéric Millet was shown at the Paris Salon of 1824, and in 1896 at an exposition at the Bishop's Palace in Chartres. The location of these works is unknown.
A black and white photograph of a self-portrait by Leprince is in the Frick Digital Collections; the location and date of the original painting are unknown. Du Sommerard speaks of Paysage de Susten en Suisse (1824, now in the Louvre) as a self-portrait, saying Leprince "pictured himself, from memory, with his pupils, braving the harshness of the frost to study nature in all its effects"; if Leprince is the seated figure with a sketchbook, his head is down and his face is not visible. Similarly, in his self-portrait in The Artist's Studio, Leprince's face is turned away from the viewer.
Leprince painted and drew family members (including portraits of his father and his brother Gustave dated 1824, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres), and also celebrities, including an early portrait of Franz Liszt.
Death
With the publication of Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence, and his work on major commissions from du Sommerard, 1826 was a busy and productive year for Leprince, but at some point he became ill. When the condition lingered and his health deteriorated, doctors advised a move to a milder climate; Leprince went with his father to Nice. "We had conceived the hope that the beautiful sky in the south of France would restore him to health; but this hope has been deceived!" lamented Féréol Bonnemaison.
The symptoms and attempted cure suggest tuberculosis. Bonnemaison calls it a "long-lasting pulmonary condition." Du Sommerard describes "a chest condition" and a "long agony," and the attempted cure: "he was forced, according to the opinion of the doctors, to tear himself away, a few months ago…to go and expire in a foreign place, in that privileged climate which a barbaric routine and, often, an even more barbaric sensibility unnecessarily assign as a resource to our patients, for whom it almost always becomes the tomb."
On the day after Christmas, 1826, Xavier Leprince died in Nice. "His last sighs were received by his father, whom no consideration, even that of serious infirmities, could separate from his son, until the fatal event which brought him back alone."
Legacy
Leprince's works testify to strong fraternal and paternal ties, a high-spirited sense of humor, immense energy, and expansive talents. The shared grief evoked by his premature death is cited by Bonnemaison, who says that "his friends, the most distinguished artists of all genres, the most commendable men of all ranks, shared and still share his parents' pain. He lives in everyone's memory, less perhaps by the originality of his talent than by the graces of his mind and the constant sweetness of his character!" The obituary in La Nouveauté also noted Leprince's sweet disposition.
As a teacher, Leprince, in du Sommerard's words, "left behind two brothers whom he was keen to make rivals." Gustave Leprince showed a number of landscapes at the Paris Salon from 1831 to 1837, but his career, like that of his oldest brother, was cut short by an early death (in 1837, at age twenty-six or twenty-seven). Léopold Leprince enjoyed considerable success as a landscape painter, exhibited works at the Paris Salon from 1822 to 1844, and had paintings acquired by a number of French museums, including three at the Louvre. Among Leprince's other successful pupils were Nicolas Alexandre Barbier, Pierre-Jean Boquet, Eugène Lepoittevin, and Charles Mozin.
In a career of only ten years, Leprince accomplished much, but he remained humble about his achievements. Du Sommerard says that Leprince "was not so deceived" by quick success "as to believe himself to be an accomplished artist. Tormented by the thought, mature beyond his years, 'that a name too soon famous is a heavy burden,' he felt the need to strengthen his natural talents by continual and perhaps too constant study, in the hope of satisfying both the taste of art-lovers and the more demanding expectations of the masters of art."
A generation after his death, Leprince would be remembered as "one of the most elegant painters of the 19th century school," and in 1886 Paul Marmottan would declare him a "great artist" possessing a talent "very spirited, very French." The 1904 edition of Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers would note that Leprince's "village fairs, carnivals, corps de garde, and a great variety of other subjects are to be found in some of the best collections." The art historian Henry Marcel found Leprince's work akin to that of Boilly, "but with a greater variety of motifs and a more lively style."
Leprince's works continue to attract collectors, as well as curatorial interest, as can be seen by the display of his paintings at both the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum, and a drive to acquire his works by the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. But there has not been a large-scale exhibit dedicated to his works, and no catalogue raissoné has been published.
Leprince in Museums
Paris
Embarquement de bestiaux sur le Passager dans le port de , 1823, Louvre Museum.
Paysage de Susten en Suisse, 1824, Louvre Museum.
Leprince's sketchbooks, with hundreds of drawings, Louvre Museum.
L'aqueduc d'Arcueil, 1820, Musée Carnavalet.
Concert dans un jardin public, c. 1820, Musée Carnavalet.
Portrait of François-Joseph Talma (attributed), before 1827, Musée Carnavalet.
Carnaval au Boulevard du Temple and La fête des Loges, photographs c. 1900 by Albert Brichaut of two otherwise unknown paintings by Leprince, Musée Carnavalet.
Le port d'Honfleur, l'embarquement des bestiaux, c. 1823, Petit Palais.
Dijon
L'Aveugle et les enfants, watercolor, 1822, Musée Magnin, Dijon.
Pêcheur ficelant une bourriche de poissons, c. 1826, Musée Magnin, Dijon.